Ghost should need no introduction with an image like theirs, which cries out Cooper, Kiss, and something altogether more wicked… And let’s face it the catholic church has all the best regalia outside those bands. The band is over to convert the masses at this years Big Day Out and their new EP ‘If You Have Ghost’ is out now on Spinefarm/Caroline.
PAUL: Hi and welcome to the Rockpit, how are you today, are you having a good day?
NAMELESS GHOUL: Yeah, it’s not winter here, but it’s cold out and it’s December morning before Christmas.
PAUL: Ghost will be visiting us for part of ‘The Big Day Out Festival’, what are you
trying to achieve whilst you are over here?
NAMELESS GHOUL: I guess there will be two things that will be slightly different from our previous visit, the first time was beginning of 2013, record was not out at that point, there’s going to be a slightly different set and one major thing is that we hope to announce quite soon that we will be doing a bunch of side shows, seeing ghost in a headliner in more controllable nocturnal environment is where we excel, it’s going to be fun!
PAUL: And that will be part of the pilgrimage that you want to do? The tour has been labelled as a pilgrimage, is that all part of what you will be classing it as coming back to Australia doing smaller shows?
NAMELESS GHOUL: I think so yes, as a headliner that’s the way to see us, everything else is just trailer versions of the big picture, so obviously for us that is very, very important, from Sweden to Australia it’s a hell of a lot different, next time we will probably return in 2015, so it’s going to be some time before we get back and do our proper thing next time.
PAUL: Excellent! What can the people in Australia expect to see as part of the stage show?
NAMELESS GHOUL: we are going to bring what we call ‘The Church’ which is a stage set we have and just generally if you have seen us on a daytime slot compared to how we are on a night time theatre nocturnal setting, it’s literally like night and day, two different things.
PAUL: where did the concepts from your stage show actually come from?
NAMELESS GHOUL: I think basically it’s a combination of classic rock and hard rock bands and their historical tours, anything from Kiss, Iron Maiden to Alice Cooper, David Bowie
and all that classical rock stuff/shockrock together with a few musical elements actually and a lot of film, a lot of horror and horror elements.
PAUL: Your first record got a good reception but wasn’t released to a global audience, is there chances of it being repackaged to people who have now discovered Ghost?
NAMELESS GHOUL: If isn’t available in some parts of the world then yes we would definitely consider it but I don’t know, we’ll see about that!
PAUL: What have been your biggest challenges up to date so far and your biggest musical moments?
NAMELESS GHOUL: We are fortunate in the sense that life on tour is quite eventful, we have done quite a few shows that are really memorable and here are moments that feel quite defining especially when you tell someone else about it, that’s the thing though, when you are on a train you don’t think about the speed or the things that you are passing in the same sense that people who stands on the station that watch the train go by, that’s just the nature of it, it’s like ‘Rock in Rio’ for example, that seemed to be a very defining moment playing for 85,000 people and ‘Rock in Rio,’ very well known, historical sort of crowd, but for us it was actually a very stressful day, it wasn’t at all very enjoyable, when 2 weeks later we are playing Columbus Ohio that was eventful in a thousand seater club, that was amazing! But for us as a band, it was a phenomenon playing ‘Rock in Rio’ was probably one of the biggest things we have ever done.
PAUL: Thinking back on your early memories of music, what made you decide you wanted to be in a rock and roll band?
NAMELESS GHOUL: one of them was when I was a kid and I use to watch the film ‘Let’s spend the night together’ a lot, the Rolling Stones film from their 1981 tour. That was a very important film for me and I was a huge Rolling Stones fan when I was a kid and I still am, but I was a very big fan of them and back when I was a kid, not only had they done ‘Let’s spend the night together’ and that tour, but it was also their height of their ‘feel real’ period where they probably had the biggest stage and they were the biggest band ever, so that’s probably where the bio was set from early on and that’s where we are heading and aiming.
PAUL: From what you have learnt as a musician, what valuable advice have you been given so far as a musician by someone you know in the music industry?
NAMELESS GHOUL: I’m the sort of musician/music fan that have read basically all the rock biographies there are and take a lot of inspiration from history, there are a lot of things you can learn from watching and reading, one band I’ve always fallen back to when it comes to inspirations is Metallica. I remember getting ‘A year and half in the life of Metallica’ the two parts in 1992, I watched it so much that I basically know all the lines in it, I’ve seen it so many times and it’s funny how much of what’s going on in those films that we are now, even though we are not on the level of Metallica black album, but how much we actually picked upon how things are done just by watching that. So it was a very long educational period just watching historical rock and roll and once you have stepped into it you’re sort of ahead of the game a little bit because you have sort of seen it before. Put that down to one typical advice, one of the biggest things I’ve learnt in last couple years is cymbal separation, I don’t know if you’re a musician yourself but that is definitely one of the biggest heart moments.
PAUL: If there was any album in history you could have appeared on, what album would that have been and why?
NAMELESS GHOUL: that’s a good one! From an economical point of view it would have been fun to have played guitar tracks on ‘Thriller,’ I’d probably go for ‘Thriller’ because it would have been a lucrative thing, there’s too much to choose from, one of my biggest heart breaks in terms of being a fan in the recordings of ‘Ride the Lightning’ and ‘Master of Puppets’ was not as documented as their later records I would have loved to have seen that
PAUL: that was my best period for Metallica, personally for myself, up until the late Cliff Burton was killed, they were so heavy and so fresh.
PAUL: what is your take on the meaning of life?
NAMELESS GHOUL: I think the most important thing is that you have a purpose, not from an outside point of view, and most people that are lost are generally laughed at, I think that’s a very fundamental thing, it’s very hard to find what that fundamental purpose is, most people find it is from being healthy, some from just being a parent and some people try to define themselves as being a rock star, but it’s very important to understand here are purposes that make sense and important for not being a well-known person or being wealthy or this and that…
PAUL: thank you for taking time to talk to the Rockpit and look forward to seeing you at ‘The Big Day Out!’
NAMELESS GHOUL: thank you man!
